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Comment by gre | Hacker News Reader

...economic hardship partially caused by economic sanctions. Sanctions are literally war and illegal unless approved by the UN.

Sanctions on Iran: https://www.state.gov/iran-sanctions/

Ben Norton on the Iran sanctions: https://youtu.be/dN2oeSXHVMI?t=1343

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This is a false narrative. While true that the sanctions have pushed the value of IRR down, the lifting of sanctions, during Obama / Khatami era only fed the corrupt IRGC and its shadow economy. It is easy to think that people are being forced to sell kidneys because of the economic sanctions and as countries imposing the sanctions we are implicit in this, but the Iranian government and Khamenei are the main culprits here. They have the power and the means stop playing menace in the region, stop their proxy wars and move towards lifting of sanctions. There is a small but vocal Iranian backed lobby in the US (NIAC specifically) that is constantly pushing for the lifting of sanctions, even during the most brutal suppressions of the Iranian people by the government, peddling a narrative that the Iranians are dissatisfied with the economy and if the sanctions are lifted, all is going to be ok.

There is a shadow army, government and economy in Iran, created and tightly controlled by the office of the supreme leader, Khamenei and enforced by IRGC. They have a chokehold on the economy, imports and exports as well as almost exclusive control over critical foreign affairs. While lifting of sanctions will marginally reduce the pressure on the IRR in the short term, it will feed this cancerous growth which is not in the interest of the Iranian people and the world.

Bully nations must never be allowed to successfully weaponize starvation. Giving in to sanctions is tantamount to negotiating with terrorists. A terrible precedent to set.

Do sanctions like this work? I imagine it would only serve to unite the people against the sanctioner.

edit: I realize from the responses that I assumed the goal was to cause the sanctioned government to fall. Of course there may be other goals.

They do. They make the enemy nation poorer, in contrast to economic cooperation that makes them stronger - which US just started to see in China.

Given examples like Cuba and the DPRK, it certainly doesn't seem to work.

Sanctions in general work very well and many people see them as war.

https://www.amazon.com/Sanctions-War-Anti-Imperialist-Perspe...

Without making me read a whole book to find the answer, what are some examples of cases where sanctions have worked?

It seems that sanctions are primarily useful at driving the target country into the arms of a larger adversarial state. And as a near-absolute rule, they never affect the leadership responsible for the behavior being sanctioned; only the common people suffer.

My impression is that economic sanctions amount to collective punishment, and are thus unethical. I still hold out hope that they will prove effective against certain egregious actors such as the Russian government, but I think it's fair to demand continuous oversight and adjustment to ensure the sanctions are having the intended effect, and not just causing needless suffering among people who are powerless to effect change.

Providing money and weapons to known terrorists is also an act of war, yet here we are.

> Sanctions are literally war and illegal unless approved by the UN.

Are you saying that war is illegal unless approved by the UN, or this specific means of war?

"According to Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, only the UN Security Council has a mandate by the international community to apply sanctions (Article 41) that must be complied with by all UN member states (Article 2,2)."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions

For the US, congress is supposed to approve of wars but that has not always happened either.

"It has been alleged that the War Powers Resolution has been violated in the past – for example, by George W. Bush invading Iraq in 2003 or by President Bill Clinton in 1999, during NATO bombing of Yugoslavia."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution

Thanks.

Allowing the UN to enact sanctions (or conduct armed warfare) does not prohibit or preclude UN member states from doing so on their own.

Given that the UN's main job is supposedly to maintain peace, one would hope so.

The UN is just an office building on First Ave. It has no actual power.

The USA can do whatever the fuck it wants, the UN has 0 jurisdiction over us.

> Sanctions are literally war

No, they aren't.

They are and they do kill people and make them suffer! Just nobody will count civilian casualties.

I think they are terrible. Just look at how little inflation has affected society even in most resilient economies and rich countries. Angry and impatient people everywhere, shoplifting and all sort of theft and crime going up.

Sanctions are not designed to directly pressure elites and corrupt leaders. They probably benefit even more because everyone now relies on them to do any foreign business. Average investor can no longer do anything. Therefore, it gives more power to the sanctioned regime.

Sanctions are designed to inflict great suffering on ordinary people in the hope of toppling the government. That's what they do!

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